Ștefan Bertalan
The world of Ștefan Bertalan overwhelms the onlooker with an expansive compendium of trials, observations, and presuppositions in search of a miraculous key with which to read the universe. The cosmology that he attempts to make out is rooted in an obsessive, almost neurotic recording of nature’s genuine habits—be they the movements of clouds in the sky, the rhythms of birds in flight, the inner structures of living organisms, or the laws that miraculously govern the lives of plants (such as the beanstalk, the cauliflower, the sunflower, the apricot tree, the iris blossom, the elderflower,
the coltsfoot leaf, etc.). His body of works prompts sophisticated philosophic discussion of the ethical and spiritual principles that constitute the foundation of our world and the necessity to follow nature as a future model for humanity. The encounter with his oeuvre is disturbing. Each work is the result of a complex, enduring, Leonardo-esque process of research into nature’s phenomena and features experimentation with various media—drawings, photographs and slides, installations and open-air actions—aimed at capturing the mechanism of life, the inner principles of growth and decay in which he involves elements from various fields such as bionics, fractal geometry, Gestalt psychology, and the Fibonacci sequence. His biological experiments, set up in the area surrounding his home, on the banks of the Timiș River, or in forests near Timișoara such as the Pădurea Verde are intense moments of observation and annotation where scientific evidence is supplemented by personal thoughts, notes, assumptions. Drawing, executed elaborately and over an extended period of time, almost always juxtaposing image and word, is by far the most-used medium in his art. His drawings, while not explanatory, are rich and embody studies that condense a cumulus of frequently obscure observations and ideas. His experiences are typically amplified via the use of a camera, producing experiments that look at overlapping sequences of reality or employing macro-photography to enlarge organic structures found in the realm of plants and insects. His camera acts both as an observer of nature and as an intruder, while the power of his language stems precisely from the palimpsest-like nature of these images, from the eclecticism of the involved sources and writings, and from the disquieting honesty of his modus operandi. Bertalan’s highly elaborated pieces suggest a puzzling fusion between irrationality, reverie, and perceptual thinking. As the artist himself put it, mathematical forms and structures are one aspect of our reality, but the unconscious mind is another—one that can mediate comprehension of our reality’s incomprehensible elements. A.Se.
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